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AR15000
Velociraptor
Velociraptor

Joined: 19 Jan 2016
Age: 40
Gender: Male
Posts: 429
Location: Right behind you

16 Mar 2016, 6:30 pm

wilburforce wrote:



Of course I have heard of personality disorders like BPD and I am aware that many people struggle with emotional regulation. But it is every person's choice whether they want to bother with people who can't regulate their emotions and strike out at others when they can't control themselves.

There are many things a person can do who struggles with emotional regulation to the point that it effects the way they treat others (especially if it makes them dangerous or emotionally abusive to those around them): there are the various strategies like my parents taught me like walking away form a situation and giving oneself the time to sort through one's feelings before talking about it, there is therapy where if one's parents didn't teach one those skills one can learn them from a psychologist, there are activities like meditation/yoga/tai chi/martial arts that can teach one skills of how to cope with and process one's emotions and how to relax and think about things rationally, and also medications to help with the same.

It is exhausting being around someone who can't regulate themselves and chooses not to try to learn. My father was a very angry person and was constantly lashing out at my siblings and I whenever he lost control (which was all the time), and he would say very mean and abusive things to us. I choose now not to have a relationship with him because he never bothered to even try to learn how to control his anger even when specifically asked to because of how much he was hurting those around him who loved him. We gave him years worth of chances to try to change, he chose not to bother even putting any sort of effort and so I chose not to have him in my life anymore.



It's your prerogative not to tolerate people who cannot control their emotions(or won't for whatever reason). Because ultimately you alone cannot change people like this. But you're speaking in a moralistic fashion with the presumption that such people could change and that they have no *desire* to change. I'm glad the techniques your parents taught you seemed to work for you because for some folks they really have no effect at all. What I have discovered about people who do not appear to have any desire or ability to control their emotions is that guilt has no effect on them. Talking in the moralistic tone that you have only provokes anger in them and makes them far more resistant to change. When you try to make them feel guilty, they perceive that you're f*****g with them and trying to assert psychological control over them and hence violate their autonomy. They often have a delusion that they are vulnerable even when they aren't.

Since we do not currently have the technology to read someone's mind yet(see the 1983 movie "Brainstorm" to get an idea of what I'm talking about), what goes on in someone else's brain(and mind) is only perceptible to them and you simply cannot verify what exactly is causing their behavior no matter what they might tell you or what their body language and facial expressions might be.